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Battle of H.R. 1981
The Battle of H.R. 1981 was a struggle which has remained out of public sight for many months after its introduction on May 25, 2011. Surprisingly, SOPA, which was introduced later by Smith, aroused more public outrage than this even more insidious Act did and does today. It is a cause of fierce and relatively evenly matched debate even within Congress. This is a true indicator of its evils considering an organization famed for being bought by corporations and known for regularly having fantasies about world domination (Manifest Destiny) is on the verge of a glorified bar brawl over this affair. The Bill What's in a name? The bill was misleadingly titled the "Protecting Children form Internet Pornographers Act of 2011" as a desperate attempt to camouflage what it really is. Representative Zoe Lofgren, of D-California, presented an amendment to rename the bill the "Keep Every American's Digital Data for Submission to the Federal Government Without a Warrant Act." Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) also opposed it, saying "This is not protecting children from Internet pornography. It's creating a database for everybody in this country for a lot of other purposes." This bill says that all Internet activity by all Americans must be recorded for at least one year (Smith wanted 18 months) in a centralized location. Smith's Excuse This is ostensibly to make tracking down the makers, distributors, and market for child pornography and arresting offenders easier. According to Smith's cronies, as IP addresses change over time, law enforcement needs to be able to "subpoena dyanic IP addresses" to track offenders after an offense has occurred. Smith himself claims that "Some Internet service providers currently retain these IP addresses for business purposes. But the period of retention varies widely among providers, from a few days to a few months. The lack of uniform data retention impedes the investigation of Internet crimes." Smith also stated that the number of child pornography cases has grown by 150% per year over the past ten years. Supporters and Opponents of the Bill On initial introduction by Lamar S. Smith of Texas, May 25, 2011, the bill was co-sponsored by 25 other representatives of the House. On July 28, 2011, the House Judiciary Committee passed the bill by a vote of 19-10. As of January 2012, there were 39 co-sponsors in the House. There are therefore 39 or more people who need to be udners crutiny for possible eviction from office in the next election. We say scrutiny because some may be honest people whose stance on child pornography is so strong that they don't mind some collateral damage if it means saving the children involved. These people should be merely put on the "Questionable" list instead of the "Evict" list where Lamar Smith is currently stooping and will be until he is evicted from Congress, at which point he will be moved to the "Barred" list of those never to be let in again. The National Sheriff's Association, the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, and the National Centre for Victims of Crime support Smith's proposal. These are perfectly understandable. The first, the NSA, wants to make its job easier and/or elevate itself toward secret police status. The NCMEC just wants to take the hard line and call down an exterminator for child porn, and the same is true for the NCVC. Unfortunately, the NCVC has not realized that every citizen can sue the ISPs for restraining orders given the creepy stalking behaviour the ISPs will be forced to adopt. The Price We Pay US Government On October 12, 2011, the Congressional Budget Office released a report on the costs of enacting the bill. They concluded that Congress would be able to get away with paying negligible amounts, despite the vast amount of data storage capacity and moonitorign hardware/software required, all these costs are fobbed off on the people being regulated by the laws. Internet Service Providers ISPs put together are expected to pay 200 million dollars a year with the new program, which will, even divided up, be staggering for smaller companies in the business and encourage monopolies or larger corporations. This is obviously natural as the big corporations would like to make more cronies, especially gaining dominance over the Internet providing business, thus giving them more absolute control over the only remaining truly uncensored media outlet that can tell us every ugly truth about every hideous thing that must be known. This could mean a collapse of the (essentially) free Internet as we know it. The Peoples of the Free World Some would stick their heads in the sand instead of fighting, but they will be destroyed anyhow in the mad quest of the Dictators and corporations to achieve absolute power and control over every man, woman and child on this planet. If this act passes, you will be screwed, absolutely screwed. Concentrating every American's credit card information in one place, a place that constantly exchanges data with the Internet, is basically begging for hackers to take everybody down. The total ignorance that Lamar Smith possesses regarding the Internet is put on full display, but perhaps it is more insidious than that, perhaps the man knows these facts full well and is interested in using it to his and his cronies' profit... The privacy of our homes will be gone, as Patrick Henry said, modified a bit to be relevant "They tell us, men, women and children of the Free World, that we are weak, unable to cope with such a formidable adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally monitored, and when a Dictator guard shall be stationed in every house?" We are facing such guards, invisible guards, who record everything we do, whose next step will be to infiltrate our computer webcams and through those webcams watch us day and night, or do this just by installing their own cameras in the style of Orwell's 1984. Please refer to the Modified Patrick Henry Speech page of this wiki for the full text of the modified speech. Conclusion There was a reason H.R. 1981 is numbered that way. It is only three small steps from 1984, after all. With it, the government and the corporations controlling the government can monitor your every move, your every word, and if they see something they don't like, they will trump up some bullshit charges to arrest you, such as conspiring agains the government or something. After that... we all know what will happen. This is why we must fight this to our last breath, for there are only two options to us: Live Free, or down and Die Hard. the Dictators and Corporations would really prefer it if you chose the latter. They thought they could watch our every move. They thought wrong.